Truman Taylor: How to rob a bank

By Truman Taylor

Thursday

Sep 19, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Too often you hear people say: “I don’t watch TV all that much.”All of you who believe that raise your hand.All of you who believe in telekinesis raise my hand.Americans are world-champion TV watchers....

Too often you hear people say: “I don’t watch TV all that much.”

All of you who believe that raise your hand.

All of you who believe in telekinesis raise my hand.

Americans are world-champion TV watchers. We watch more than anyone: more than twice as much. About five hours a day, 34 hours a week.

To put that another way: If we work eight hours a day and sleep right and watch five hours of TV, we’re left with three hours to shower and shave, stop for coffee on the way to work, pick up some bread and milk on the way home and eat three meals a day.

And the funny thing about this is: According to a new Rasmussen Reports survey, 79 percent of us believe it’s other Americans who watch too much television.

You, of course, “don’t watch TV all that much.”

You do watch some video on an iPhone and iPad, and then there’s all that video on your office computer. When you get home there may be some programs you’ve recorded and after that, perhaps a little live TV before hitting the hay.

But you don’t “watch TV all that much ... ”

There’s the news, of course. Television is the main place 55 percent of us told the Gallup people we use for current events.

We hear a lot of talk about the Internet taking over the news delivery business, but Gallup say only about 21 percent of us get our news online.

You may be one of the many older Americans and highly educated Americans — college postgraduates — who put the most emphasis on newspapers or other print publications as their main source of news. So then, naturally, you don’t need to “watch TV all that much.”

Many of you say your reason is that TV today is not educational. It doesn’t teach you anything — things you need to know.

Try telling that to Blaise Balczak. He’s accused of robbing his local branch of the Chase Bank down on Plainfield Avenue in Grand Rapids, Mich.

The police say Balczak told them that he got the idea of how to rob a bank from watching a true-crime documentary on TV.

When he left the bank he walked home.

On TV, the robber had cut his long hair short to change the way he had looked on the bank surveillance cameras.

Balczak brought a pair of scissors with him to the bank robbery and, as he was walking home, cut off his own very long hair. Just like the bank robber on the TV show. Perhaps Balczak should have waited.

Police say they followed a trail of hair from the bank to Balczak’s home and arrested him.

So, you see, TV can teach. It hasn’t become, as Edward Murrow feared it might, “just lights and wires in a box.”

There’s so much more you can learn from TV if you would just watch it more.

There was that report about Los Angeles having more good-looking women and good-looking men than any other American city.

It also has more plastic surgeons.

Truman Taylor (TrumanBTaylor@comcast.net)

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